Perhaps the artist most widely associated with sunflowers is Post-Impressionist icon Vincent van Gogh, who found much inspiration in these brilliant blooms, their effulgence of yellow and exaggerated size a perfect match for Van Gogh’s intense, color-drenched style. The glory of the sunflower, however, is not only limited to Van Gogh and has brightened many canvases, including those of Claude Monet, Georgia O’Keeffe and Diego Rivera, as well as the following works by Evelyn De Morgan, Gustave Caillebotte and Paul Gauguin.
Evelyn De Morgan’s Clytie
The sunflower's mythological origin involves a beautiful nymph named Clytie who fell in love with Apollo, god of the sun. Apollo soon lost interest in Clytie, but to prove her devotion to him she sat upon a rock staring at Apollo’s golden chariot above and did not eat or drink for nine days. Eventually, the other gods felt enough compassion for Clytie to turn her into what would eventually become the sunflower, so that she could always draw energy from and gaze up at her beloved.
By the time she was seventeen, British painter Evelyn De Morgan (1855-1919) was determined to become an artist and eventually overcame her parents’ objections to such a career. Evelyn’s uncle was John Roddam Spencer Stanhope, a Pre-Raphaelite who encouraged Evelyn’s creative hopes and no doubt influenced her own artistic inclinations. Myths were often depicted during the Victorian era, and De Morgan’s coolly sensual Clytie (ca. 1886) shows the forsaken nymph amid sunflowers and about to morph into one herself—a portrait of tragic devotion, or perhaps even a cautionary tale.
Gustave Caillebotte’s Sunflowers on the Banks of the Seine
French Impressionist Gustave Caillebotte was known for his talent, generosity and love of gardening. Caillebotte also had a flair for unusual perspectives, like his famed Paris Street: Rainy Day and his 1886 Sunflowers on the Banks of the Seine.
Caillebotte opted to make this particular point of view from behind a sunflower patch blooming along the river bank. The flowers rise up at the forefront of the painting, with heavy blooms and broad green leaves, while on the other side of the Seine the colors of the French flag flutter in the breeze and are mirrored in the water below.
Van Gogh, Gauguin and Sunflowers
In 1888, Vincent van Gogh had high hopes that his friend and fellow artist Paul Gauguin would join him in the French village of Arles and that they could paint and live there together. Van Gogh had been painting various sunflower arrangements in Arles, and he even hung some of the canvases in Gauguin’s room to provide a bright welcome when Gauguin finally agreed to a visit. By this point in his career, the change from the darker browns of his earlier years in Holland to the rich yellows, ochres, blues and greens of southern France was notable in Van Gogh’s work, along with the freer pulse of his brushstrokes.
Van Gogh and Gauguin unfortunately did not experience the harmonious Studio of the South that Van Gogh had envisioned, and nine weeks after he arrived, Gauguin returned to Paris. Relations had become tense between the pair, with the result being a notorious incident that left Van Gogh minus a considerable chunk of his earlobe.
Before his departure, however, Gauguin did a portrait of Van Gogh featuring the Dutch artist depicting his beloved sunflowers. Furthermore, in the year following, Gauguin painted a nude Caribbean woman standing before fascinatingly large sunflowers, comprising a work that almost seemed to link Gauguin’s recent past in Arles with Van Gogh—and his native sojourns to come.
Sources
- Van Gogh Gallery
- Evelyn Pickering De Morgan and the Allegorical Body – Elise Lawton Smith (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2002)
